second glass pr plan 2014_group 3

Second Glass Wine Riot Strategic Public Relations Plan 2014

Second Glass Wine Riot

Strategic Public Relations Plan 2014

Prepared By:

Monique Gaskins Kele Song

Matthew Sun Farida Waquar

University of Southern California

December 9, 2013

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BACKGROUND

In 2009, Second Glass founded their event, Wine Riot in Boston. They had the goal to

educate young wine enthusiasts through fun and “sassy” events. (Hsu 1) Second Glass was

founded by Co-Founder and CEO, Morgan First, a Southern California native who went to

college in Boston and her partner, Founder and President, Tyler Balliet, also a West Coast

transplant new to Boston at the time. (“About Us”) Balliet started Second Glass after working at

a wine shop on the famous Newbury Street in Boston. He noticed that lots of young people

came into the store not knowing much about wine and were very inquisitive. (“Predicting”) After

learning that wineries and producers had all of these answers, he paired up with them and started

an “unpretentious” (“About Us”) print wine magazine where Morgan First helped promote

through events. They wanted to make their events less “boring” than the general opinion of other

wine tasting parties at the time. (“Predicting”) They initially got exhibitors through friends and

acquaintances. (Hsu 1) They then decided to focus on Wine Riot events solely. Starting in 2011,

they expanded Wine Riot annual events nationwide to Washington D.C, Chicago, San Francisco,

New York, and Los Angeles. (“Predicting”)

The event itself has many wineries and vendors displaying 250 different types of wines

arranged in layout by geography (i.e. France, New Zealand, California) so one can feel as if

they’re traveling to faraway lands to try different types of wine. (“Second Glass”) In addition,

they have a “Bubbly Bar” which displays 6 sparking wines to try, a photo booth, temporary

tattoos, a DJ spinning tunes and hourly “Crash Courses” which are 20-minute informative

workshops about wine such as “Old World vs New World wines”. (“Wine Riot”)

BUSINESS GOAL

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Second Glass’s mission is to help people discover new wines, get educated, and have

unknown wineries get exposure while gaining revenue in the process. As it has been quoted,

“Wine Riot’s mission is to make wine tasting as unpretentious and unintimidating as possible.”

(“Wine Riot”) Attendees can try wines by wineries that they have never heard of before from

around the globe. They can take note of the wines they like and recommend them to their

friends. Both the attendees and their friends can then go to the www.secondglass.com website

and purchase the wines directly from there. Second Glass gets a commission from these sales.

Second Glass also makes money from the attendees in each of their national events. Tickets

purchased in advance start at $50 per person and increase to $60 per person closer to the event

date. Die-hard Wine Riot fans can sign up in advance to “volunteer” to work a session (i.e.

Saturday 1-5pm) of the event that weekend and then attend another session (i.e. Saturday 7-

11pm) for free and not pay the $50-60 cover charge. Hopefully then these “volunteers” will still

purchase the wines they like on the Second Glass website.

Vendors must pay a fee to display their wine at these events and on the website. Booths for

vendors sell out six months in advance and there is a wait list. (Hsu 1) Second Glass also has

partnerships with national and local businesses in each of the cities they have events. Second

Glass gets money from companies like Uber’s cab service in exchange for having them have a

booth at the event and offer a $20 off the first ride or 20% off the next ride for existing

customers. Second Glass is also known to partner with local city food trucks and have the food

trucks sell a special prix fixe menu at Wine Riot with an extra $5-10 charge passed down to the

attendees.

STATEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY

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The six events that need to be promoted for 2014 include: the ones in Boston, New York, Los

Angeles, Washington D.C, San Francisco, & Chicago which are a great opportunity to tap into a

young, emerging target market untapped by most other wine companies. Many wine drinkers

who are of retirement age are trying to cut back, according to research group, IBISWorld. (Hsu

1) According to the Wine Market Council, “Young drinkers are enthusiastic wine students having

been more exposed to wine at an earlier age than their parents. More than half are boosting their

wine consumption.” (Hsu 1) These “young drinkers” are known as Millennials and range in age

from 21-35. They are the fastest growing consumers (“Wine Riot”) at 70 million strong and

already show potential as a good target market as they are interested in the craft beer craze as

well. (Hsu 1) According to John Gillespie, Wine Market Council's president, "The take-away is

that while baby boomers are still technically our best customers, Millennials as a group … are

the single most dynamic target for wine marketers.” (Hsu 1) Most of the tastings are affordable,

everyday drinking wines that fit well with this price-sensitive target demographic. Milennials

have many decades ahead of their lives to be long-time wine drinkers and be marketed to by

wineries. As Tyler Balliet, Co-Founder of Second Glass said, “The wine industry still operates in

the older style, but we’re the generation that is going to push them forward regardless of whether

the industry comes along for the ride.” (“Wine Riot”)

RESEARCH

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Research Goals

To learn about the public perception on current Wine Riot and Second Glass

To dig out the market demand on wine tasting and wine purchasing

To have a better understanding on the target demographic

To identify the competitors and their strategy

To learn more about how we can have the same level of attendance in each city

Research Methodology

Online databases research: study the public relations strategy and business models of

competitors

Content analysis: study the past media reports and social media mentions on Wine Riot

and Second Glass of last year

Focus group analysis: pick a group of the target consumers of Second Glass, and ask

questions about their opinions on wine purchasing and Wine Riot

Self-administered surveys: conduct online surveys among current consumers of Second

Glass to know their experiences with Wine Riot

SITUATION ANALYSIS

Strengths

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Great efforts on social media, which attract much attention from active users of social

media as the potential customers

The overall fresh design of Wine Riot is very attractive to young minds, including the

logos, the colorful webpage design, and the photo booth at the event

The mobile application of Second Glass allows users to follow the event agenda and

makes attendees to easily remember all of the wines they try at the event

Wine Riot is set in different big cities across the country, which largely expands the brand

influence and increases customers of Second Glass

Wine Riot provides crash course wine seminars and a DJ photo booth, which combines

fun and education, besides the normal commercial objective of the wine tasting event

Wine Riot brings in 250 kinds of wines from across the globe, which provides various

options for event attendees

Second Glass connects wine drinkers to the wineries to ensure they can buy wine directly

from the source, which facilitates consumers’ wine purchase

Weaknesses

Second Glass is an events and technology start-up with a small team, which indicates

limited intelligence support in its business operation and the public relations activities at

a large scale

The startup has limited financial sources, and it can not afford to largely expand business

operation or implement public relations events

Only six cities are on the list of Wine Riot so far, and it is a small number compared to

the total number of all the cities in the United States. The events are not held in "flyover

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states" but rather on the coasts (except Chicago), for instance, there are no events in big

cities like Dallas, Atlanta, Denver and Las Vegas etc.

The official blog of Wine Riot based on the platform of Tumblr does not have many

diverse contents to attract followers, and it only covers a photo and simple words for

each event

The current mobile application of Second Glass only provide three functions, including

the general event information, wine recommendation and personal wine record, and these

functions can not fully meet the consumer demand

Opportunities

More people are using social media now, and the social media strategy of Second Glass

can help the company get more potential customers

The social media trend makes some wineries adopt social media in their business, and

Second Glass can seek potential partners from it

Not too many direct competitors that have a festival for wine specifically, so Wine Riot is

very unique

Young drinkers between the ages of 21-35 are becoming the fast growing customers of

the wine industry

Threats

There are many competitive wine businesses also using social media and mobile

application, and their diverse business services, including wine deals and wine scanners

There are similar wine events, including wineries, craft beer fests, L.A Food & Wine

Festival and the Rock & Roll Wine Festival in Las Vegas

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Some states have strict alcohol shipping laws, and it limits the business scope of Second

Glass

Strategic Implications

Based on the limited available intelligence and financial sources, Second Glass should

mostly focus on improving the current public relations tactics, including perfecting the

blog and the mobile application

Second Glass is an event-based company, but the communication should last all year

long

Second Glass can encourage the enthusiastic fans to create contents about Wine Riot and

include them in the communication tactics

The company can cooperate with local wineries to do promotions, which saves the

budget and also expands the brand influence

We must continue to be a unique and different event so that competitors can't catch up to

us

COMMUNICATION GOALS

There are three main communication goals that our campaign will focus on; these goals are

about the general tone of the festival, the purpose of the festival, and the most obvious involves

participation.

Goal 1: The Wine Riot is Fun

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It is important for our campaign that our target audience knows that Wine Riot is fun.

Although this seems simple and clear, there will be no target audience without the idea that

there’s a good time to be had at the Riot. The festival is called The Wine Riot for a reason. Our

constituents need to know that this isn’t your everyday wine tasting. Wine Riot is a riot.

Instead of focusing on just our general audience, we would like a younger audience to feel

that Wine Riot is fun. This is not the kind of festival that is only for senior citizens. This is the

kind of riot that anyone in the legal drinking age would have a particularly good time.

Goal 2: Educating the Audience

The Wine Riot is a place to learn more about wine. It’s important that our audience knows

there are different booths that will teach them various facts about wine, while they’re drinking.

Some would say the first and second goals are somewhat contradictory but the fun of the Riot is

also finding different ways to drink the wine, and different things to pare it with. The Wine Riot

overall is about breaking stigmas for whom the average wine drinker should be and becoming

more aware of what wines the audience individually will like. One of our main goals is to

educate people on wine.

Goal 3: Participation

The last goal is to convince the target audience to come to the festival. The audience can’t

have fun or learn if they’re not actually at the festival. The main goal is to have droves of our

audience in attendance, showing more people through their experience how fun Wine Riot is.

More than just convincing people to come to the festival, the goal is to get people to

participate in events that are sponsored by the festival. These events include contests and

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exercises at different booths, as well as the citywide contests leading up to the day of the event.

The goal is to have the target audience participating in Wine Riot events.

OBJECTIVES

Within one month of each event, there should be at least a 75% increase interest in web

searches and mentions.

At least 50% of subscribed wine club members of each area register for the event one

month prior to the event.

Ensure 60% of contestants in the citywide contests register for each Wine Riot in their

city at least one week prior to the event.

Collect over 1 million impressions by June 2014 from events of the on-going riot.

Have a 25% increase in attendance by November of 2014 compared to the attendance

numbers of the Wine Riot of 2013.

KEY AUDIENCES

The key audiences have been separated into four specific categories: couples, clubs, special

interest groups, and females.

Clubs

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There are many different kind of clubs that can be courted by the Wine Riot. The first club

includes those who are a part of wine clubs, or any wine aficionado over 21 and up. These are the

key group that is already going to be looking for a wine festival without much introduction needing

to be done. These clubs are perfect for the Wine Riot because they’re mostly city based. Also, this is

going to be the audience that is the biggest users and most aware of our product.

Local foodie clubs are also a big part of the target audience. A big sell for our product is to know

the wine can be paired with food. Foodie’s love to try new food and find new dishes to try. The Wine

Riot focuses on new wines and new dishes that can be paired with these wines.

The last group might be a bit of a stretch but monthly book clubs are perfect for the Wine Riot.

The book clubs might not be a huge constituent, but they are a pack. If one of the members is

invited, all of them will go together, and then they will end up finding a wine they enjoy, buying that

wine and making it a staple of their book club sessions.

Couples

There is a romantic picture that is associated with wine. Newlyweds of any age are our target

audience. Newlyweds want to find fun things to do together, trying to learn how to date as a married

couple. The Wine Riot is the perfect place for them to do that. Since we want to focus on attracting a

younger audience in general, couples ages 21-30 are an essential part of our key audience.

Females

Although the Wine Riot doesn’t want to exclude men, women are the main source for our

festivals. With women, no specific age group has to be targeted, giving us a larger selection of

women to choose from. All women ages 21-65 are welcome and Wine Festivals are for girl’s days

and for a group of women to come together.

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Special Interest Groups

All of these groups vary widely. First, we’d focus on graduate students ages 21-35. Again, we’re

trying to pull in a younger crowd. This is an age group that is coming out of the club scene and

searching for new venues to drink wine and try new things. It will be easy to target key graduate

programs in the different cities and cater to their needs. This age group especially plays into our

contests outside of the Wine Riot.

The next group is the contributors to the festival like owners of wineries and wine based

restaurants and their employees. This is the type of group that interlocks well with our mission. We

can help them and they can help us. It is mutually beneficial for all of us to know of each other’s

existence and add to each other’s wealth.

We depend heavily on the local groups. The local radio and tv stations need events to talk about

and sponsors for their programs. We need them to introduce our event to the public and inform them

of our contests leading up to each event. Local bloggers are also a big force in bringing in people to

the festival and informing people of dates and times and events going on inside of the Wine Riot. We

also focus on the local bars and restaurants to work with us as we work with them.

KEY MESSAGES

Wine Riot is fun.

Audiences can find wines from all around the world in one room at the Wine Riot.

Wine Riot can be educational in a fun way.

Wine is for every adult.

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Wine Riot has events that you won’t want to miss.

STRATEGIES

The campaign strategies will focus on events and key partnerships. Within the month leading

up to the festival in each city, there will be buzz building activities locally. The campaign will

also focus on a teaser campaign with our various partners.

The buzz building will also come from our partnerships. We would like to build strong media

relations with local online media outlets. They will push the material of our campaign. Another

strategy is to forge partnerships with influential bloggers who will aide to our buzz building

campaign. It is also important that we partner with local wineries whose wine can be featured at

the festival. On the other side of that venture, we want to partner with local restaurants as well

that can feature some of the wines from our festival. Our campaign will benefit greatly from a

partnership with promotional sites like Livingsocial and Groupon who have user information that

push coupons directly to the audience that are looking for that kind of activity. Lastly, we want to

partner with cab services like Uber to ensure the safety of our participants, while helping the

business of the cab service.

TACTICS

Our campaign will sponsor an instagram contest with the hashtag #WineRiot. Users will

have to take a picture with their favorite wine and give a short anecdote of why it is their

favorite wine. The four winners will be chosen from each city depending on their stories

and (privately) the amount of impressions they provide.

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We will sponsor a Wine Pong tournament between six major bars in each city that will all

culminate in the major tournament at each festival. We will provide the wine for the bars,

as long as the bars promote the festival and encourage contestants to sign up. We will

keep tickets for sale, posters, and other information of the festival at each bar. We will

also make sure to also promote safety with drinking as well at these events.

Pitch to online media outlets in the respective cities like Urban Daddy, Eater, LAist,

DCist, Eventbrite, Thrillist, BostInno, in theCapital, and top influencers on twitter from

each city. The outlets will promote our wine pong tournament throughout each city.

Pitch story ideas to foodie bloggers. These stories will include:

The perfect wine with different recipes that we will provide from our restaurant

partners.

A story could educate on the difference between oaked and un-oaked wines or about

the taste difference in matured versus new wines.

Another idea is to introduce readers to the different ways to go through the festival.

Our participants get to choose their own wine culture experience from French, or

Argentinean to Spanish. Bloggers stories could focus on the different routes and

what each has to offer.

We will also utilize our social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and

Pinterest pages to promote the festival in each city.

Create and place posters throughout the city including our partner wineries, bars, and

restaurants.

Send special invitations to our key club audience like the local wine and book clubs.

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Have “pop ups” at local liquor stores, restaurants, and farmer’s markets that feature wine

tasting like what will be at the festival.

Pitch the bubble bar to local morning talk shows as a segment to go through the various

champagnes, their differences, and what to pair them with. This is an actual booth at our

event and it works perfectly with morning talk show segments.

Give specifically wine restaurants our featured wine and encourage them to put it on their

menu with their signature dish, requesting the waiter mention the event when the wine is

chosen or at the beginning of each meal when giving each guest the specials.

Pitch our events and the actual riot to print niche magazines and local newsletters.

Encourage the wineries whose wine is featured to promote the event by giving them the

link to our website and other social media sources as well as posters.

Create a commercial that runs on our blog and on the blogs of local influencers in the

wine world. We want to include a couple of viral videos that are outsourced to a

professional video production company and post them to YouTube and Vimeo. Then

we’ll utilize the social media like Facebook and Twitter to further create buzz and try to

create hot topic on the Internet.

There are two viral videos: one promotes the six wine riots as a whole, the other

focuses on a specific city, which needs extra marketing promotion.

There is no limitation on the types of the viral videos but the content should be

amazing and related to our brand. There are so many related topics they could adopt,

such as funny or embarrassing moments, celebrity attendance, or a dramatic story

during the riot.

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During the launch of the videos on our official social media account should work

along with some accounts of celebrities and influencers to promote the videos and

try to create a hot topic in that period of time.

TIMELINE

Second Glass will continue Wine Riot in six cities in 2014 including: New York, Boston,

Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The schedule of Wine Riot in these

cities is shown below.

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Date City of Wine RiotFebruary 28 - March 1 New York

April 4-5 BostonMay 2-3 ChicagoJune 6-7 San Francisco

September 26-27 Washington, D.C.October 24-25 BostonNovember 7-8 Los Angeles

We will implement similar tactics to promote Wine Riot in each city. Here is the timeline for the

detailed activities.

Activities Start Date Lasting Days

Pitch to bloggers One month and a half before Wine Riot 5 daysPitch to monthly local magazines

One month before Wine Riot 2 days

Instagram contest One month before Wine Riot 1 monthWineries promotion One month before Wine Riot 1 monthViral Video Campaign One month before Wine Riot 1 monthWine pairing promotion Contact the restaurants three weeks in advance

and launch it one week before Wine Riot 1 week

Post posters for Wine Pong Two weeks before the Wine Pong 1 dayPop-ups Contact the stores threes weeks in advance, and

launch it one week before the event1 week

Post posters for Wine Riot Two weeks before the event 1 daySend out event invitations Two weeks before the event 2 daysSocial media promotion More intensive posts two weeks before the event

and also post photos after the event3 weeks

Pitch to weekly and daily local media

One week before Wine Riot 2 days

Wine Pong tournament A Saturday night, one week before the event 1 dayTV talk show Friday Morning in that week 1 day

The following is the detailed schedule for promoting Wine Riot in New York City, and the

activities in other five cities will follow the same pattern.

Date Activities

January 20 (Monday) - January 24 (Friday) Pitch to bloggers

February 1 (Sat) – February 27 (Thursday) Instagram contest

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Wineries promotion

Viral Video Campaign

February 3 (Monday) - February 4 (Tuesday) Pitch to monthly local magazine

February 10 (Monday) Post posters for Wine Pong

February 10 (Monday) - February 14 (Friday) Contact restaurants for Wine Pairing and liquor stores for “Pop-ups”

February 15 (Saturday) – March 7 (Friday) Social media promotion

February 17 (Monday) Post posters for Wine Riot

February 17 (Monday) - February 18 (Tuesday) Send out event invitations

February 19 (Wednesday) - February 20 (Thursday)

Pitch to weekly and daily local media

February 21 (Friday) - February 27 (Thursday) Launch Wine Pairing and “Pop-ups”

February 22 (Sat) Wine Pong Tournament

February 28 (Friday) TV Talk Show

February 28 (Friday) - March 1 (Saturday) Wine Riot at New York

BUDGET

Instagram contest: $0

We can track the users directly on Instagram for free and use the free features of

Statigr.am and Instagram social monitoring tools.

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Wine Pong: $20 (average price of a bottle of wine) x 15 (amount of the wine bottles one

night each table) + $30 (amount of the table in each city) x 6 cities = $1,980

Blogger promotion: $100 (average price of each blogger) x 50 (# of bloggers) = $5,000

Social media: $0 (Resource time to manage this is calculated into employee’s salary)

Posters: $500 (design fee) + $10 (printing fee each) * 20 (amount of the copies) * 6

(cities)= $12,500

Invitations: $0

The invitations can be sent via email to wine club members

Pop-ups: $500 per city x 6 = $3,000

TV Talk shows: $0

It only requires coordination with the Talent Bookers/Executive Producers of each

TV show.

Wine pairing promotion: $300 (each day price on the menu) x 1 day each restaurant x 5

(amount of restaurants in each city) x 6 (cities) = $9,000

Promotion in local monthly magazines: $0

Using press releases, there is no fee.

Promotion in weekly media: $0

Using press releases, there is no fee.

Promotion with wineries: $0

It’s mutual cooperation.

Viral Video Marketing Campaign: $2,000 (making each video) * 2 (amount of video) =

$4,000

New blog live: $0

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It will be made through Wordpress using our internal web designer whose salary has

already been accounted for.

EVALUATION

1. Within one month of each event, there should be at least a 75% increase interest in web

searches and mentions.

Measurable: Monitor web searches online through Google Analytics and monitor social

media mentions through social media monitoring tools, HootSuite and SproutSocial.

2. At least 50% of subscribed wine club members of each area register for the event one month

prior to the event.

Measurable: On the registration form to attend each event, have an entry field for “If

you’re in a wine club, which one?” and measure responses with lists of wine club

members obtained from local wine club presidents.

3. Ensure 60% of contestants in the citywide contests register for each Wine Riot in their city at

least one week prior to the event.

Measurable: Through looking at the contest lead generation entry information (name,

contact info) and cross-reference (through Microsoft Excel) with the list of those who

registered for each event.

4. Collect over 1 million impressions by June 2014 from events of the ongoing riots.

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Measurable: Monitor website impressions and visits online using Google Analytics over

this time period.

5. Have a 25% total increase in attendance by November of 2014 compared to the total

attendance numbers of the Wine Riots of 2013.

Measurable: Monitor web ticket purchases and in-person ticket purchases at each event

and compare to the previous time period.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"About Us." Second Glass. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://secondglass.com/about-us/>.

Hsu, Tiffany. "Wineries pour efforts in targeting younger drinkers." Los Angeles Times. 01 Mar. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.

<http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/01/business/la-fi-young-wine-drinkers-20130228>.

"Predicting a Wine Riot." Great Wine News. Patrick Media Group LLC. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.

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<http://greatwinenews.com/predicting-a-wine-riot/>.

"Second Glass Celebrates Five Years of Wine Riot in Boston, MA" PRWeb. Vocus, 21 Mar. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/3/prweb10554519.htm/>.

"Wine Riot: Enjoy a New Take on Wine Tasting" The Travel Channel. Scripps Networks Digital, 05 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. <http://blog.travelchannel.com/the-traveling-type/2013/10/05/wine-riot-enjoy-a-new-take-on-wine-tasting/>.

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